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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22360273">the crown, it weighs heavy ('till it's banging on my eyelids)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/pendragonfics/pseuds/pendragonfics'>pendragonfics</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Arranged Marriage, F/M, Family Dynamics, Female Reader, Fluff, Healing, Injury Recovery, Mirkwood, Pre-The Hobbit, Romantic Fluff, She/her pronouns for reader</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-01-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-01-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 09:49:03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,825</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22360273</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/pendragonfics/pseuds/pendragonfics</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p><strike>Sometimes</strike>, self-sacrifice affects those around you more than just yourself.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Thranduil/Reader, Thranduil/You</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>87</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>the crown, it weighs heavy ('till it's banging on my eyelids)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>^^ Title comes from the lyrics of the Florence &amp; The Machine song, <i>Too Much Is Never Enough</i>. </p><p>&amp; This was a request from an Anonymous person from my Tumblr! </p><p>The request itself is from an imagine from @imaginexhobbit on Tumblr: <i>Imagine how Thranduil helps you to cope with the pain he can’t help but cause you while caring for an injury you suffered in battle</i>, and the request of also: "with the reader being in an established relationship with him and surviving that injury". </p><p>They asked, and I delivered: I love Thranduil, and I missed writing for him xx</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>While you were an accomplished warrior, you were also a queen, a mother by proxy, and a beloved wife. It was your fault; you hadn’t made the wisest of decisions, and that was an understatement. Impulsivity had always been a shortcoming of yours, but that Thranduil had seen it as a blessing. But it wasn’t a blessing this day. <em>No</em>. Your nature had led to cause you pain, and while as much as that it inflicted on those around you, only in the aftermath had it occurred to you.</p><p>“You would think, that after all the years I have lived,” you say, wincing through the waves of pain, “that I would know better.”</p><p>“It was a foolish endeavour, my Queen,” the healer commented. She looked at you curiously, perhaps wondering you had charged into battle like a common elven woman, rather than someone your station. “…but merited.”</p><p>There was little to be merited with the wounds that you now wore.</p><p>It was a wonder that the warriors had managed to salvage you from the carnage and transport you in such a manner to the healing you needed. All you remembered from the encounter with the Orcish skirmish was their formation, formidable and ferocious, and the smell of ichor upon the ground. Perhaps your memories were cut short out of the fear of it all, and while you wanted to know what creature gave you three slashes from a poisoned Orc axe, you had to admit that the thought of it was frightening.</p><p>Even with poppy milk, the pain was unbearable. The healer must have noticed your pain, and quietly, she motioned to someone you had not noticed, another healer, who held a similar bowl to the one you drank from before. No words were shared as they lowered the bowl to your lips, and drinking your fill once more, you felt your mind fall into a slumber.</p><p>One where the pain gained from the battle was not present.</p>
<hr/><p>
  <em>You had always known when you were dreaming, even as a young elven maid. It’s how now, you know you are not awake. The meadow is brighter than any woodland area that you have stepped in, and there are no spiders in sight. It’s too good to be a truth universally acknowledged, and when your hand finds your side, the lack of pain confirms it. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Before you, laying on the forest floor, was your son. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>He still remembered his true mother, the first queen, and could not find it in his heart to call you his mother, no matter what the marriage between his father and you asked of him. How the council could arrange such a match, no less than five hundred years after the loss of the first Queen of Mirkwood, made your stomach recoil. But you were an eligible elven maid of Lothlórien, and he was a King without a queen. The only reason you didn’t cut your elven locks and abscond to the world of Men was the rumours of the young prince, alone while his father kept the kingdom. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Quietly, you settle beside Legolas. He looks to you briefly. But sets his attention to the bow placed by his feet. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I’m sorry I can’t give you a brother,” you whisper, soft. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I don’t need a brother.” He says, fidgeting with his bow. “I need a mother.” </em>
</p><p>
  <em>The meadow seems to grow as he speaks, and what was a small patch of greenery inside the forest has turned into a glade, metamorphosed into a secret garden full of delightful flora and fauna. You look over his shoulder and see rabbits bounding through, a family of skunks, and flying above, robins and fairywrens. But his gaze is on the rabbits, a fuzzy white one, still. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>“War isn’t a game, Legolas,” you place a hand upon his shoulder, but he shrugs from your touch. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Then why do you play games with your life?” he turns. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>His face has changed. In fact, he is no longer Legolas. It would seem that he has transformed into his father, the man who you had learned to love after the arranged marriage. He has the same eyes as his son, and while Thranduil’s hair is ice white, a blonde to rival the stars, his sons’ was maturing, finer than straw. The shift caught you off guard and staring at your love, you felt the words grow cold in your mouth before you summoned breath to speak. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I -,” </em>
</p><p>
  <em>“You are dearer to me than you can ever comprehend…more than I can put words to. I cannot lose you, melissë.” </em>
</p><p>
  <em>You reach for him, but the bow that was at Legolas’ feet is between you, growing, changing from a weapon to a ravine, dividing you from one another. You reach for him, but your side aches, and while one hand of yours stretches for your husband, your love, the other holds your aching abdomen. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>It was a dream. It had to be a dream, as no life you had lived was so finicky in detail. But the pain in your side, the red that stained your hand as it withdrew…it made you wonder what a dream was, and what was real to you.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Thranduil!”</em>
</p>
<hr/><p>When you wake, you are not in the Healer’s room. There is little light in the room, you find as your eyes adjust, but the window is ajar, and the moonlight’s silvery-grey touch spills over the sill and upon the floor beside where you lay. Your heart is still racing from the dream, you know now that it was but a dream, but the pain in your side was not imagined. You had gone onto the battlefield, and slain monsters and Orcs alike to protect what you loved.</p><p>And despite the pain you were in, you’d do it all over again.</p><p>“The moon is the brightest tonight, as are the stars,” a familiar voice spoke.</p><p>Turning your head, you saw him. Ever the dramatic man, he sat in his best robes in the dimmest side of the room, his perch beside the bed close enough for your eyes to see the tiredness on his face, but too far for your arm to reach for his. But despite this, you reached for your husband’s hand, and he took it in his. Slowly, he threaded his fingers through your own.</p><p>“You are missing out on the festival,” you whisper.</p><p>“There wouldn’t be a festival if it weren’t for you,” he replies. “and I am ever grateful for you.”</p><p>You sigh. “I’d do it again, always for you. But…” you look to the cot you are confined to, “what a price to pay to save the life of the man that I love.”</p><p>He undoes his grasp then, moving from the chair he sat in. King Thranduil was as beautiful now as he was the day you married him, and the day you fell in love with him. But there is something behind his eyes that makes you reconsider your words, now that they have left your mouth.</p><p>“I…I have done wrong,” you whisper.</p><p>“<em>You could have died</em>!” he chastises.</p><p>He turns to the window and places his gaze beyond the room you both inhabit. You watch as the movement causes his robes to float around his legs, his pace now as slow as a tree, rooted to the earth where he now stands. The moonlight climbs the material, and as glittering as it is, it is magnified, and you can see thousands of refractions from every single strand of gilded thread.</p><p>“I -,” you stammer, “<em>You </em>could have died, husband, my <em>Lórien</em>!” you muster the strength, but once again, you feel powerless as soon as you speak. “You are a ruler, and I did my duty. The woodland would not be as it is, without you!”</p><p>“I could never live with myself if you died,” he whispers. At the moment when you spoke, you hadn’t realised that he had returned to his seat beside the bed, and the change in tone sends a chill through your spine in shock. While you know that fact, hearing it from the man that you had grown to love affirms it, makes it real. “I barely survived after…after her, but the Gods are kind today, and - you are here.”</p><p>Instead of reaching for your husband’s hand, you lean upward, as if to leave the cot. He recoils, but when you reach behind yourself - and odd sight, a Queen fluffing her own pillows - Thranduil watches as you, now half-sitting up, regard him. Your eyes are at a similar height, and now equal, you smile to him.</p><p>“I am not done with you, or Legolas yet, my love.” You say. “The Gods cannot claim me yet, no matter how hard they try.”</p><p>“You are truly a formidable woman.” He smirks, the pain has gone from his face in brief. Slowly, he leans his face toward you, but before he can come to you the rest of the way, you reach for the front of his robes and close the distance between the pair of your lips. “…ah, <em>melinyel</em>.”</p>
<hr/><p>By the next festival of light, you are healed enough to train once more, but when the Healers tell you this, you decline the offers from the guard to re-learn to fight. There is no commotion or change in the way that you are perceived. Before becoming the Queen of Mirkwood, you weren’t a titled elven woman. Your blood, that of Galadriel’s heritage, had gotten you only so far in life, and in order to go ahead in life, you had to fight.</p><p>“I would ask why you rescinded the offer to rehabilitate yourself with your blade, but I feel as if I already know the answer,” Thranduil commented, looking toward you with a sly look in his eye. These days, he had brightened up, become more open toward you with his feelings. Perhaps all it had taken was the flesh wound you sustained, or the realisation of mortality to himself and you, immortal beings.</p><p>“Do continue,” you say.</p><p>Legolas runs ahead of you, playing with an elf he had made friends with. Her red hair glints in the sunlight like fire, and he is like ice, but they play as if they are forged from the same kiln. Beside you, Thranduil has your arm linked in his, and while you are healed from the injury, he is always mindful of the lingering pain that acts as if a ghost beneath your skin.</p><p>“You are…content,” he says, finally. Kissing your cheek, your jaw, your earlobe, he continues, “I am not suggesting you were not before, but now, there is a comfortability in your life here. I see it in your eyes, you are, dare I say, happy?”</p><p>“Oh, Thranduil…that’s almost word-for-word from my writings,” you beam, kissing his cheek.</p><p>“But I am correct, yes?” he asks.</p><p>“Don’t ever change, my true <em>melissë</em>.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Elvish Words:<br/>- melissë , my love<br/>- Lórien , king/leader<br/>- melinyel , i love you<br/></p><p>You can find me on Tumblr on as @chaotic--lovely, and if you want to request a fic, check out <a href="https://pendragonfics.tumblr.com/request_conditions">@pendragonfics</a>! ʕ·ᴥ·ʔ✿</p></blockquote></div></div>
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